


Smells like Living

by ShiDreamin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Blind Betrayal, Terezine 2019, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-26 21:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20749406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: Derse is purple. She knows this, knows it well after years of waking in purple walls, purple ceilings. Purple curtains, purple drapes, purple water sweeping the streets when it overflows from the purple canals. Terezi can close her eyes and see Derse, see it truly, see the purple hues that map the world and cradle them in its brick walls, its winds, its sun.She opens her eyes, and sees nothing.“Ah.”





	Smells like Living

Derse feels different, tonight.  
It's the wind, curling the loose strands of hair, invisible fingers scratching at her scalp. Terezi breaths out a purple tinted block of smoke. It smells of bitter oil, dense. It stinks of stars.

She's never noticed it before.

Derse is purple. She knows this, knows it well after years of waking in purple walls, purple ceilings. Purple curtains, purple drapes, purple water sweeping the streets when it overflows from the purple canals. Terezi can close her eyes and see Derse, see it truly, see the purple hues that map the world and cradle them in its brick walls, its winds, its sun.

She opens her eyes, and sees nothing.

“Ah.”

If she thinks, she can envision the hazy clouds in the sky, cut into pieces by the long chain connecting Derse to its moon. She knows it’s purple, like everything else, but it’s funny. Strange.

Thinking now, she can’t help but think it’d look better gold.

She can see in her dreams, kind of. Words bring up colors. Scents bring up colors. Touch brings up colors.

She thinks she can taste them, if she tries hard enough.

Terezi wonders if Vriska is pleased. Happy with herself, giddy with joy. Flushed blue, dark, yellow eye dotted with black. Terezi smells melted wax and burnt rope, tastes seaweed and saltwater and feels hair. Long hair. Wavy, tangled, slightly oily under her fingers when Vriska calmed down enough to let her weave her hands through.

In Derse, Terezi’s hands clench around nothing but purple air. Purple.

It tastes like acid. Oil. Poison to the system.

It must be brick under her fingertips, coarse, awkwardly bumpy along the edges. She sniffs it. Stinky. She licks it.

Gamzee.

The rainbow of colors washes over her senses, bold and bright and menacing in its blind joy, and Terezi smells iron and fur and wood chopped to pieces. She blinks through the darkness, peers into the light, and remembers that she can see nothing at all.

She does not remember when she opened her eyes.

Derse is not a place Terezi knows well, and yet she does. It is as though she’s spent her life in this planet, wandering, searching, unsteady feet leading her tired soul to a new place of rest. She thinks her lusus knew this. She thinks her lusus always knew this was bound to happen.

Sight and life are not one and the same. Not for dragons.

Not for Terezi; not anymore.

Life is cautious, telling, the sound of her footsteps on purple bricks uphill, the slant of the road causing her to sweat slightly. In a dream she can float, fly away, but the stability, the knowledge, of the rough ground against her feet is a reminder. She steps on a crooked brick, tilted up in an uneven pattern, and swallows down the desire to smell, to lick, to place herself better in her surroundings.

Derse is Derse is Derse. She knows this.

Oh.

She knows this.

The wind rustles her hair, driving cold spikes into her skin despite the soft pajamas protecting her. Terezi shivers, slowing in her ascent, careful as she ducks behind a familiar tower. The stairs that lead to her bedchamber seem long, short, and she finds herself caressing the pole alongside, noticing the ridges, the holes. Once she would have though them smooth, a singular cylinder crafted from purple. Now she knows that the second flight is heavier, wider, though smoother under her grip. The third flight smells of berries. The fourth, oddly, like pineapple, and she licks it only to discover the taste is still of wood and paint.

It is a strange excitement that takes Terezi when she draws patterns into the black walls, closing in on the door connected to her dream’s bed chamber. It is funny, strange, for her to dream in her dream, an odd paradox she had never considered before. The wooden door creaks high, stiff, under her hands, and she runs her fingers along the wood as well. She thinks it would be brown if it didn’t stink so. She traces the shape of the door slow, letting it slide shut, and discovering that hers is crooked, the top right loose enough to fit two fingers through.

Familiar exhaustion, so strikingly familiar of Derse, settles onto her shoulders, and a yawn overtakes her. Terezi scrunches her nose, irritated, the smell of her breath lingering unpleasantly. She should sleep, or wake; they are one and same.

Without sight, but with mind. Without Vriska, but not alone. The bed sags heavy until her body, warm from her walk, cold from the chill of the window peering in to her dreams. The moon, the sun, the stars shine overhead, bright, coaxing her open eyes to see.

Terezi awakes to shadows. Blackness, ink, darker than the purple hued Derse sky. She hears the tremors of her lusus, the shrill whistle of wind dodging branches, lifting leaves. She smells the birth of flowers, swaying in their spread of pollen, the dense spores catching the breeze calling itself home. The world shakes when she rises, one steady foot before the other, the tickle of grass against her ankles, the cool of air on her back, warmth lay on the ground below her. She kicks a stray crayon, hears it titter as it bounces, and picks it up. Revels in its smoothness. Gives it a kiss.

Cherry red.

Vriska was not wrong. Terezi cannot fathom a path that would return her sight, the new sensation of taking in a view from a dragon’s back, eyes pursuing rainbows of color in the horizon. No longer able to see the greens and blues of water from aboard a ship, squeezing her eyes shut when her vision blurred by water dripping in. Vriska was not wrong.

And yet, as Terezi finds herself drowsy, better content in the warmth of her blankets than the cold breeze rustling the band of her shirt, she cannot find that she minds.

The world is alive around her still.

**Author's Note:**

> I had an honor writing for Terezine 2019! It was a lot of fun trying this kind of "peering into a character's stream of consciousness" style of writing. Come check us out if you enjoyed this fic!
> 
> https://terezine.tumblr.com/  
Also, feel free to visit my twitter if u want to yell at me about fics and prompts :) Same username and all


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